Texas Capital Value & Growth can easily turn from a micro-cap growth fund to a blue-chip value fund within a year. The manager Eric Barden believes that life is too short to fight the market, so he’d rather evaluate the relevance of 50 strategies to the current environment. In essence, the fund aims to develop the optimal company profile for the current market and then looks for the securities reflecting that profile.

When looking for growth, the Jordan Opportunity Fund explores macro trends and dislocations in the fundamental supply-demand story that go unrecognized by the market. It focuses on four to six investment themes where the firm builds analysis advantage. A crucial part of Jordan's strategy is avoiding high-multiple stocks and the risks that go with them.

The Phoenix Small-Cap Growth Fund digs into the small-cap universe in search of the next Wal-Mart. The fund uses a fundamental process and clearly defined criteria, looking for companies with high EPS growth foreseeable for the next five years, high return on invested capital (ROIC), and sustainability. Portfolio managers Yossi Lipsker and Lou Holtz consider the long-term outlook crucial for success in the small-cap area and keep turnover low.

It’s very difficult to have a competitive advantage in the large-cap area, where there is plenty of information available and everyone knows the companies well. AIM Large Cap Growth Fund, however, is trying to outperform its peers by better risk management. Relying on a balanced, unemotional, objective, bottom-up process, the fund uses hard facts to find investment opportunities and to identify stocks where Wall Street consensus may be wrong.

When you have two managers, one with value and one with growth perspective, you'd be less dependent on the type of stocks the market favors at the moment. The Thrivent Mid Cap Stock Fund combines not only growth and value, but also targets “the best of both worlds” by investing in mid-cap stocks. According to the managers, the mid-cap universe combines the strong growth prospects of small-caps with the stability of large-caps.